familypediawikiaorg-20200214-history
Familypedia:Watercooler
(For older or rapidly-dating contributions to this page, please see Genealogy:Watercooler/Archive 1 and/or specifically-named pages (linked from paragraphs here)) ---- Creating entries See and Genealogy:People Template. Mailing list The mailing list for this Wiki is Genealogy-l and is at: http://www.wikia.com/mailman/listinfo/genealogy-l User:IFaqeer—iFaqeer (Talk to me!) 19:19, 7 Mar 2005 (GMT) Babel templates, showing languages understood by contributors Some of us have coloured boxes on our User pages indicating which languages we have any working knowledge of. See Genealogy:Babel templates and its discussion page. List of contributors Because of the wikicities structure, there seems to be no easy way to list those who contribute to this wikicity. Or have I missed something? Unless there's a better place, how about Genealogy:Contributors? Robin Patterson 23:34, 31 Jul 2005 (UTC) *'There is now a special page for this '. It isn't as detailed as Genealogy:Contributors, but is updated automatically Bill 22:52, 28 August 2006 (UTC) Administrators Anyone who would like to be given the extra facility that goes with being a sysop or bureaucrat may edit Genealogy:Requests for adminship. Dealing with spam Most of our responsible contributors look at the list of Recent Changes. Spam is removed when seen. And, as noted in a recent message from Angela, it should then be reported at http://www.wikicities.com/wiki/Talk:Spam_Blacklist. Robin Patterson 00:33, 10 Aug 2005 (UTC) Please login whenever practicable, because that makes less work for those of us who check the recent changes for spam. Robin Patterson 22:58, 31 Aug 2005 (UTC) Submission to Cyndi's List I've applied to have this site listed on Cyndi's List with the other quarter million! See the entry on the August 16, 2005, page of http://www.cyndislist.com/new0805.htm Robin Patterson Including us in the Wikia Tour :It works: Tour Do a brief tour as part of the Wikia tour system. Then you can suggest pages that we should add to it. I won't make you do the donkey work!! Robin Patterson 12:22, 8 Sep 2005 (UTC) Now the TourBusStop? While we are refining and embellishing our Wikia tour, I think we could try to join the outside organisation of TourBusStop. Possibly NOT appropriate for individual wikicities: see discussion at WC Central. Starting page, if we can do it, can/should be Genealogy:TourBusStop (where I have copied and slightly adapted the required page)? However, a look at the existing wikis suggests that it is absolutely necessary to have it in the main namespace as TourBusStop. Need to enquire further. Any other comments/warnings/help before someone dives in? Robin Patterson 22:46, 11 Sep 2005 (UTC) GEDCOM conversion Weary of manually converting my html pages into pages for this site, I have taken an easier, if somewhat less elegant solution of writing a program. As I only started it two days ago, it is still somewhat crude and is not picking up all of the gedcom details. ... If any of you are interested in the program, with somewhat limited support, you can contact me. Yewenyi 11:01, 12 Sep 2005 (UTC) (See '') We were the 5th-biggest wikicity in September 2005 3.5 MB according to http://www.wikicities.com/wikistats/EN/TablesDatabaseSize.htm Thanks, Brian!! Robin Patterson 05:18, 10 Oct 2005 (UTC) Multipurpose names, such as "Adam" We have a page for the original "Adam". OK so far. Soon, however, someone with an interest in that first name and/or the matching surname may want to create a separate article about it, along the lines of "Khan" and "Ferguson". Which one gets the plain single four-letter word as its page name? Can we make a universal "rule" for it (to minimise confusion and rewriting)? '''See (and please continue discussion on) separate new page Genealogy talk:page names.' Robin Patterson 00:27, 20 Oct 2005 (UTC) (moved some later discussion '') '' Hey, guys, you're doing well there, but this discussion was already threatening to be too big for the Watercooler when I added my (obviously not clear enough) request last year: "See separate new page Genealogy:page names" - '''Please create some new talk pages for specific subjects whenever discussion gets to be more than a couple of paragraphs! Robin Patterson 05:44, 7 July 2006 (UTC) '' A Better way? I suspect this site is not taking off as it could do because starting a page is too difficult and time consuming. I also see a problem of names clashing: there must be many John Smith (1950-?)! I suggest scrapping the template format and just allowing free entry as on Wikipedia. I suggest that every individual should take an Identity derived from name and full birth date (Y,M,D) eg. Smith Peter Paul 19500605 In most cases this would be unique, but if not then add A,B,C etc to the end. To start an entry for this enter Smith Peter Paul 19500605 into Search. Then, if not found, click to create the page, as in Wikipedia. Then enter any text freely, incorporating other Identities such as Mother:Smith Mary 19001230. Nothing else needed, no forms to fill in, the Wikilinks just light up as they are recognised! Any number of distant known relatives could be listed on the page, and would link if their page was present. All other info would be optional. With a bit of extra software, a tab could be clicked from any page to create a 4-level tree graphic instantly (by recognising the Mother:/Father:/Sibling:/Offspring: headers. --Lindosland 23:05, 7 Jan 2006 (UTC) :Well, the template is just a suggestion, and it's a good tool to use when creating new pages. People can certainly make any page they want, in any format. Then it's up to the sysops to either make the updates and corrections, or not as they choose. I came here looking for a surname, Putnam, and it's not here. So, I'm looking for a way to tie it in. I know that one of the Putnam lines is a cousin of Ben Franklin, who was a signer of the Declaration of Independence. We'll get there eventually. And I like the naming standard, personally. I think we'll have disamb pages, just like Wikipedia, as we grow, but we'll eventually get those worked out. Don't worry too much about it. We can do redirects whenever necessary. Chadlupkes 19:27, 12 Jan 2006 (UTC) :Looks like I'm going to have to find a way to link it in from here. So, let's start with Ann Putnam (1679-1716) Chadlupkes 00:49, 14 March 2006 (UTC) ::As I've just said, "Perfectly good start!" ::But I think I see part of one of the problems Chad and Lindosland are referring to. Evidently not enough prominence has been given to the flexibility and the optional nature of the recommended template. I'll work on them. Robin Patterson 02:29, 14 March 2006 (UTC) :::Probably still needs work. I've looked a bit at the various wiki's doing genealogy, and concluded that for my purposes, this was the most flexible, and best set up. However, A) You probably still need an easier way to start a fresh page, and B) I believe it is still unclear to the casual user that the templates are suggestions, not requirements. Bill 7:41, 3 August 2006 ::I have two recommendations to make on this subject. :::1. The current "People template" is highly detailed, and provides considerable information of use to users trying to create a new page. On the other hand, it requires a lot of editing to get rid of those helpful explanations when trying to set up a new page. To a novice computer user, it might be fairly daunting. I think something simpler would help people get started with this. In particular, creating a template that was a bit more straight forward would help. To this end I've created a http://genealogy.wikia.com/wiki/People_Alt_Template. It is primarily designed with my own purposes in mind, but could be adapted for other purposes. its primary advantage is that it is much more streamlined, requiring a new user to master fewer skills initially. :::2. You really need a button on the toolbox that says something like "Create New Page". That button would then take you to a page where you would be given a choice of templates to select from. I would imagine you'd need sys-op privleges to do that, but if done, I think the process would be simplified considerably. However, something similar to this is present on Nhprman personal page. The main difference between this and what I'm suggesting seems to be that it doesn't give you a choice of templates. Also, its located on someone's personal page, so not many folks are going to stumble over it. Bill Willis 16:50, 4 August 2006. :::I've created a page for the Wigton Walker Project that hopefully simplifies the page creation process. it uses the same routine that Nhprman used on his personal page, but gives a couple of options for creating a page according to templates. Right now I'm only using two 'templates'---one is the Wigton Walker people template the other is not really a template but rather is designed to produce a blank page that the user can format however they wish. However, the same technique could be used for more complex templates. To tell the truth, though, I'm not sure that we really need more templates for basic data entry. At anyrate, if you want to see what I've done go to Wigton Walker Create Page. Its fairly simple, and still needs some work, but will give an idea of where this might be taken.Bill 20:42, 2 September 2006 (UTC) I've added a section to Robin's Create Page link in the sidebar, that allows people to choose from several different people article templates, creating a page on the fly. The templates range from a blank page, to a research oriented format. The "standard" people template is in item 4. This may simplify the process of creating a new article. ::::Good work, Bill. (Now you may delete your paragraph "2" above that was asking for the sidebar button etc.) But in reference to the standard template you said in para "1": "it requires a lot of editing to get rid of those helpful explanations when trying to set up a new page. " - it shouldn't; it wasn't meant to; you can leave alone all the things inside "comment" tags unless one of us old hands has goofed in not closing some. Robin Patterson 06:38, 26 September 2006 (UTC) WYSIWYG During recent weeks I've had several different users, with differing skill levels, but all reasonably computer literate, testing our the Genealogy Wiki through the Wigton Walker Portal. While the response has been favorable, there several of the testers commented that it required a great deal of effort to get up to speed, so that the system could be used effectively. One tester commented that it was like "Looking down a rabbit hole" by which she meant that the Wikia system is definitely not WYSIWYG---and that requirement for WYSIWYG is, I think, a common denominator among potential users. The editing bar would seem to be a great improvement, but the formating needs to be made much more transparent to meet the average users needs. This unfullfilled requirement may explain the low "residence time" for people using the site---most registered users leave within a day of trying out the site. Bill 12:10, 20 September 2006 (UTC) :We're working on it! (Bill and I write long emails to one another.) But the WYSIWYG era is over: now you have to ask if you want to be sure WYSIWYG - or (even in old Word 6) you may get Normal View or Outline View or Master Document View. This site may be initially too simple for some people!!! '''Just click on "Edit", then type, then click "Save".' (A neighbour of mine wanted to add a Word document to the Cities: wikia; had no end of trouble after he thought he would use his computer knowledge and use the Upload button, and didn't think hard about the response he got. When I said "Try Paste" all was well.) Robin Patterson 07:37, 25 September 2006 (UTC) Template, etc, proposals Places template Please visit my User page for a proposal for a town and city template ("Genealogy:Place") in G-Wiki, arising from my recent conversation with Robin Patterson. If this was an article, rather than a template, I'd "be bold" and simply create it, but I'm deferring to older Wikipedians and other frequent editors here. Thanks in advance for your input! Nhprman 05:05, 27 January 2006 (UTC) :I think the Place template will be very helpful. Among other uses, I can imagine a wiki-style community-maintained equivalent of Cyndi's list for place-specific resources. One suggestion: make it very clear in the template that page names should be complete. I don't know how many times I've been reading through other people's genealogy records and found references to places such as "Newport, Lincoln". Um, what state? What country? --TomChatt 07:57, 25 June 2006 (UTC) ::Tom, I agree up to a point; but don't overdo it. We don't need "Handsworth, Birmingham, West Midlands, England, United Kingdom, Europe". If in doubt, I'd use the Wikipedia pagename. (By the way, does "" have any advantage over ""?) Robin Patterson 06:08, 7 July 2006 (UTC) Now (since 5 months ago actually) we have Genealogy:Place Template, so please '''go there', improve it, and use its talk page ad lib. Robin Patterson 06:08, 7 July 2006 (UTC) Place categories How about setting up places as categories, under which Family Name categories can be connected as subcategories, with the people entries that fit there connected? See Category:Grafschaft-Bentheim, Prussia for an example of this. -Briantice 22:54, 30 June 2006 (UTC) :Brian, I'm sorry I missed a few days. We already have Category:Places. Please integrate with your excellent additional place categories! (If there has been some duplication, we can work it out.) Robin Patterson 06:08, 7 July 2006 (UTC) Rodovid.org I am interested in what you are doing here, but thought you might be interested in Rodovid.org another family tree wiki, which has automatic tree generation and GEDCOM import. It is also trying to become a wikimedia project. You comments on this project would be greatly appreciated. --172.214.9.154 20:50, 24 March 2006 (UTC), (User:Bjwebb on Wikipedia, Meta and Rodovid) Hi again. I noticed I recieved no reply. Rodovid would be interested in merging with the site you have here, what do you think?--172.200.178.107 13:51, 30 March 2006 (UTC) :WOW! I'm really impressed! I haven't been here in a while due to limited time, but having a form like that to enter information would be a dream! Robin, check it out if you haven't already. I really think Wikia should jump on this before Wikimedia does. Chadlupkes 22:41, 3 April 2006 (UTC) :Merging Rodovid with this site could be quite interesting. As I've been starting to work with this site, I realize that it provides half of what I've been missing. A wiki like this is a perfect forum for the collaborative work of genealogy, but what's missing here is the benefit of structured data, such as can be used to automatically generate a variety of useful charts (descendants, ancestor trees, ahnentafels, etc). A combination of the structured data (editable by everyone, with revision history, talk pages, etc) like Rodovid has plus the free-form narrative offered here would be a winner combo. -- TomChatt 07:57, 25 June 2006 (UTC) Records, Repositories, and things other than Persons Is this site only intended to have pages for specific Persons using the Person template, or is it appropriate to create other related pages? One thing I'm thinking of is a source record, especially of the sort not publicly available, for example a personal letter or diary written by an ancestor. I'd like to have a separate page where I can put a transcript, image scan, and other info relating to such a source. What would be the appropriate way to name such a page? Some possibilities: * Diary of Joseph Bloggs (1812-1888) * Joseph Bloggs (1812-1888) (diary) * Joseph Bloggs (1812-1888) / Diary * Record:Joseph Bloggs (1812-1888) / Diary I'm new to this Wiki thing, so I'm not familiar enough with whatever protocols (as well as technical ramifications) there may be concerning namespaces, use of parenthesis, use of other special characters like '/', etc. in page names. Also, I don't know how this fits in with any intended ontology for this wiki. I notice there's been a "Place" template introduced, which is a good thing. There are a number of other entities that may be relevant (I'm thinking of the GENTECH data model as a guide.) Another useful entity might be "Repository", for example, "Records of the New Amsterdam Dutch Church", a page which describes what sort of records are available, where they're available, what condition they're in, any special notes on interpretation, etc. The source citations on Person pages could refer to Repository pages and save having to repeat a bunch of common information. -- TomChatt 07:57, 25 June 2006 (UTC) ::A slash in a page name creates a subpage. Has its uses. Try one. Round brackets are no problem - just another character. Repository pages are a great idea - go for them! Robin Patterson 07:41, 7 July 2006 (UTC) Note about names and birth/death dates Can I just leave a brief note here about naming articles about people? It would be wise, when naming, to use birth/death dates, when known. "John Brown" as an article name, for instance, is a problem, since it could be any one of hundreds of John Browns. However, John Brown (1854-1903) narrows the pool considerably, lessons confusion, and makes it easier to browse. - Nhprman 18:34, 30 June 2006 (UTC) :I think that's a good convention to follow. But I wonder what to do about forward refs to articles that don't exist yet, especially when you may not know birth-death years yet. Suppose I'm doing "Joseph Bloggs (1831-1896)" and that article makes reference to his father James Bloggs, about whom I don't know anything yet other than his name (e.g., I had some "Joseph, son of James" ref). In writing the Joseph article, should I (a) not make James a link, (b) link to "James Bloggs", © link to "James Bloggs (?-?)". If we do (b) or ©, how much does the Wiki software automatically help us out? I notice on Wikipedia that if you look for an article by some name, and they have several articles with the same name, differentiated by parentheticals, you get a "disambiguation page". Does that happen automagically when several articles have the same name not counting the parentheses? Or do those have to be manually crafted and maintained? (This is the sort of thing we should work out ahead of time, before the project really scales up and the trees actually start to connect!) TomChatt 07:34, 2 July 2006 (UTC) ::I think it's manual at present, but see below. And no harm in putting a John Doe link in at any time, with or without "(?-?)". Robin Patterson 07:41, 7 July 2006 (UTC) Disambiguation Now that several contributors have touched on aspects of disambiguation, it's great that one of the new ones has made a positive move to deal with it. Please see Template talk:Disambiguation and let's carry on that discussion there. Robin Patterson 07:41, 7 July 2006 (UTC) Admin Just made Nhprman and Robin Paterson an Admin. Sorry about the delay. Please welcome them in their new roles. Roles that they, in large part, will help define--with the rest of us nudging them all the way. I know they will help make the Wiki much bigger and better. Your no-longer-lonely-Admin and Founder, --IFaqeer 09:39, 14 July 2006 (UTC) Portals I'd like to set up a Portal for Walker researchers, similar to that used on the Wikipedia. I checked the Wikipedia for guidance on setting one up. Found their Portal construction guidance page, but I'm not sure that this will work away from the Wikipedia. Guidance requested. Bill (date?) :It probably WILL work (if we copy enough templates etc). But it may be unnecessarily complicated. So: ::Have a shot at duplicating it if you like, possibly putting ideas and instructions on a new project:portals page for us all to study if we feel inclined ::Make even more use of categories, eg pages that form the main divisions of your "portal" can all be directly listed on category:Walker Surname, and as an extra help the main "portal" page can have a piped link so that it is listed near the top, eg *. :Robin Patterson 06:52, 24 August 2006 (UTC) Ive created a defacto portal, similar to that of the box-skeleton recommended on Wikipedia, but didn't import the templates. Looked to be faster just to create similar versions without actually importing the templates. When time permits I'll go back in and work on the box-skeleton aspects---they do look better. Eventually I suspect we will be devloping a system of portals and subportals to help with general navigation on this wiki. Also working to fix problems with categories in the Wigotn Walker pages. Haven't quite got a picture in my mind of how to make that work for us. Getting there though. Bill 19:34, 28 August 2006 (UTC) MediaWiki ToolBar I notice that the MediaWiki ToolBar is now missing from the pages I'm editing. Thought at first it was something lost because of a change in my preferences, but I don't see anything immediately that suggests this. While you can always use HTML coding in the editings, the ToolBar was a convenient tool. Is its absence related to the recent update (7 July) and related to the fact that the old version of the toolbar is not supported any more? Can we get the toolbar back. User talk:WMWillis (date?) :Still working for me (using Cologne Blue skin as I do everywhere in MediaWiki if possible). Not that I remember to use the toolbar often: still type tildes, dashes, brackets, and apostrophes in gay profusion as one did before the toolbar was invented. Still not working for you? Robin Patterson 06:57, 24 August 2006 (UTC) ::Still not working. I'll recheck preferences and see if someting has changed. There's a check box for ToolBar, but doesn't seem to have any effect. Maybe its something at this end. Thnx ::I checked a few things. I get the same problem with other Wikia sites, but not with Wikipedia. The problem is not with turning JavaScript on, or by setting the preferences (ie, I haven't turn off the tool bar in the preferences.) A suggestion on the live chat site was that this might be related to a recent upgrade that wasn't optimized for the browser I'm using (Safari). Suspect that's the problem. I don't really want to try to bring back IE on my system. I may be able to check this with Netscape Navigator. But I suspect this is the problem, and the fix needed is likely to be Wikia wide. User talk:WMWillis 24 August, 1:51 PM, EST. Requests for deletion? Oops, I tried to use the Template:delete to request an incorrect category name and I found out it doesn't exist on this wiki. Is there another method in place yet to do that? — MrDolomite | Talk 17:10, 4 September 2006 (UTC) :For a wrong category, a better solution than deleting is to use the "category redirect", in case another person creates the wrong category again. See Template:category redirect. Robin Patterson 06:50, 11 September 2006 (UTC) Special Page: Category (See project talk:categories. Potential for good - or trainwrecks? (This followed straight on from the "categories" discussion that has been moved.) More good suggestions. Its clear from browsing the Wikipedia that there are a substantial number of schemes suitable for dealing with a large number of articles. I'm fairly new to the Wikipedia system. I've been looking it over for perhaps 6 months, and saw its obvious applicability to doing genealogy---then found (as others have done before for the same reasons) this site. I think there's great potential here, but here's also a lot of work that needs to be done in terms of underlying implementation. The category problem is only a small component of that. Doesn't much matter to me how the problems get fixed, as long as they get fixed. Its more a matter of somone in a position takeing on the task (essential an Admin). Robin can't do all of that by himself. As you point out, there's a potential trainwreck in some of these problem areas, waiting to happen. Let me explain my perspective on this. *There are roughly 4K worth of articles on this site. Most of them were input using an automated GEDCOM program, and probably represent 20% of someone's personal ancestry---(all those ancestors whose given names began from roughly A to D (or something)). They were obviously dumping articles in right and left, and then for some reason, quit. That was almost a year ago. Nothing much has happened since. Even the site statistics are not being updated. I'm curious why to all of the above. ::Yewenyi's upload system is available for others. Robin Patterson 07:45, 12 September 2006 (UTC) :::I'm sure. If you want to be in the business of GEDCOM dumps, it will probably do the job nicely. (I presume a dump would come out in the "standard" template format---definitely not a broadly accepted format in the industry. If you want that non-industry standard format, there you go.) However, my point was, after dumping in a few thousand entries, that process stopped. That's why the list of site articles is top heavy for people whose first names begin with 'A' through 'D' or something. Yewenyi apparently got through some portion of his alphbetized list of ancestors, and decided it wasn't worth his time to do it anymore---least wise, he didn't complete the task. Why? ::::Well, I've asked on his user-page, which is our only contact. He may be indisposed or worse. We may never know. Anyway, his system still had some flaws, he said; but any of you who are interested should take a look. (I doubt if it's restricted to a particular entry template.) Robin Patterson 06:56, 22 September 2006 (UTC) :::::At some point I'm going to need to look at that system closely. However, I suspect the reason for his absence is fairly obvious. Look at the date and context of his last edit...that is likely to be the undelrying reason for him going elsewhere. There is an additional component as well, another interaction occurring about the same time, that may also be part of the reason.Bill 11:00, 22 September 2006 (UTC) *By comparison, the Wikipedia has something like 1.4 million articles as of today. *By comparison, Ancestry.com has the equivlalent of over 14 Million articles. They are the most successful online genealogy system going, though their approach has severe limitations. (Limitations which this site can overcome, if it chooses). *If this site really has in mind meeting its stated mission objective of getting lineages for everyone on the world into its database, it would have lineages for 6.6 Billion people---just counting people alive today. That's going to be a moderately hefty database. As you said, a trainwreck waiting to happen. Bill 16:45, 11 September 2006 (UTC) Special page: MiniUpload *An item has appeared in the Special page category at http://genealogy.wikia.com/wiki/Special:MiniUpload *It does not have the usual page layout for the Wiki, and in particular has no trace on the page history---so you don't know who loaded it, or when it was loaded. Can anyone identify the origin of this file? Since use of this page involves access to an end-user's hard drive, I'd thnk we'd want to know what its history was.Bill 16:37, 6 September 2006 (UTC) **Hmm, this is the best I found about it so far http://lists.wikia.com/pipermail/muppet-l/2006-August/000000.html. It looks like it is on all wikia:Special:Specialpages sites, not just here. — MrDolomite | Talk 20:59, 10 September 2006 (UTC) ::Doesn't look more dangerous than the normal upload page, but I've asked at Central Wikia: http://www.wikia.com/wiki/Forum:MiniUpload --Robin Patterson 08:55, 15 September 2006 (UTC) :::I'm a conservative soul. When I find something that doesn't fit the pattern (in this case, no history), I like to know why. I also get nervous when things access my hard drive, as that could be a vehicle for doing things I wouldn't want done. I especially get nervous when those things don't fit the pattern I expect. I didn't see anything obvious when I looked at the underlying source material for the page, but I don't consider myself a programmer, and would rather have a professional grade opinion on something like this. Appreciate your checking on it.Bill 12:33, 15 September 2006 (UTC) Captcha Comment moved to wikia:Forum:Spam hurdle too much — MrDolomite | Talk 20:53, 10 September 2006 (UTC) Hey, I don't mind having the extra screen pop up when the edit has external links. If it helps stop vandalspam, I am for it. But, when the question popped up, it removed my edit summary without telling me. Can this be changed not to wipe that out. I would hate to solve one problem but then create another. :) — MrDolomite | Talk 14:30, 10 September 2006 (UTC) ::Is this related to the MiniUpload question, or is it a different problem. If it's different could you point me to where you are seeing thisBill 14:42, 10 September 2006 (UTC) :::Nope, different question. It happened when I was making an edit which included an external link, like this http://www.google.com http://www.google.com — MrDolomite | Talk 20:53, 10 September 2006 (UTC) ::::Thanks. That helps clear that up. Seems like there should be a history on the item if it appears under Genealogy, but apparently not. By the way, I noticed your input system for adding a comment on your user page. Nice approach. I imagine its used elsewhere as well. At anyrate, I found it useful enough to copy the technique for another purpose. Thanks for that too.Bill 22:20, 10 September 2006 (UTC)